Demand Budget Reforms

May 15, 1990|By ROWLAND EVANS and ROBERT NOVACK

WASHINGTON — Rep. Newt Gingrich, the House Republican whip, wants the budget crisis used as a weapon for President Bush to regain control over the federal spending, including emergency presidential powers for a 12-month period and a new Gramm- Rudman sequestration law authorizing the president to "adjust" spending cuts as needed.

Gingrich is privately telling the White House that the current Gramm-Rudman sequestration law will be a political nightmare for congressmen running for re- election this fall. A "flexible, common sense" sequester plan, plus the line- item veto long demanded by Bush, would get Congress off the political hook and restore spending-control powers the White House needs.

Whether the Democrats, who control both House and Senate, would buy such a dramatic proposal is highly doubtful. But Gingrich tells colleagues Bush would have national support if he ordered Congress into emergency session a month before the election and demanded the reforms.

RE-ELECTION RIVALRY

Two cabinet members who are intimate friends of George Bush - Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher and Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady - are quietly competing to become chairman of the president's 1992 re-election campaign.

Mosbacher, whose political strength is fund-raising, is expected to leave the Cabinet this year - perhaps as early as June. Brady was a member of Bush's political circle during his 1988 presidential campaign. The re-election chairman may not be named until 1992.

A footnote: The early frontrunner to actually run the re-election effort with the title of campaign manager is ex-Nixon aide Fred Malek, a Bush favorite. He is currently handling arrangements for July's economic summit in Houston.

BARNEY'S DARK DAYS

Republican efforts are hardening to get the House Ethics Committee at least to censure liberal Democratic Rep. Barney Frank on charges that may go well beyond the initial accusation that his relationship with a male prosititute brought discredit on the House.

The Democratic-controlled committee may be ready to go along with a Republican request that it broaden the inquiry into possible pressures from Frank to release the prostitute, Stephen L. Gobie, from Virginia probation during a time when Frank is believed to have known that Gobie was still practicing his trade.

One House insider says privately that the tougher position which House Republicans are slowly moving toward and may end up with is demand for outright expulsion.

PLEASE QUIT, ALAN

Key California Democrats, fearful that scandal-scarred Senate Majority Whip Alan Cranston's insistence on running for a fifth term in 1992 will lose the seat to the Republicans, plan late this year to ask him to step aside gracefully.

Cranston's once lofty approval ratings collapsed after he was linked with bankrupt financier Charles Keating in the savings and loan debacle. A horde of ambitious Democrats have lined up for the '92 primary, raising the possibility that Cranston will lead the huge field, be renominated with a plurality, and then go on to lose to the Republicans in November. Consequently, Cranston will be urged to step aside voluntarily rather than endanger his role as one of the giants of California politics, along with Hiram Johnson and Ronald Reagan.